Inside This Week's Movies

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Constantine, Son of the Mask and more.

By IGN FilmForce

Constantine, Warner Bros. adaptation of the Hellblazer graphic novels, hits theaters this weekend along with Jamie Kennedy's Son of the Mask. Because of Winn-Dixie, from director Wayne Wang, also opens in wide release. In limited, we're looking at Imaginary Heroes and Downfall.

Born with a gift he didn't want, the ability to clearly recognize the half-breed angels and demons that walk the earth in human skin, Constantine (Keanu Reeves) was driven to take his own life to escape the tormenting clarity of his vision. But he failed. Resuscitated against his will, he found himself cast back into the land of the living. Now, marked as an attempted suicide with a temporary lease on life, he patrols the earthly border between heaven and hell, hoping in vain to earn his way to salvation by sending the devil's foot soldiers back to the depths.

But Constantine is no saint. Disillusioned by the world around him and at odds with the one beyond, he's a hard-drinking, hard-living bitter hero who scorns the very idea of heroism. Constantine will fight to save your soul but he doesn't want your admiration or your thanks &#Array; and certainly not your sympathy.

The Scoop: When cartoonist Tim Avery's new son is born with the Mask of Loki's spectacular powers &#Array; to the dismay of the family's jealous dog &#Array; it turns the household upside down and launches a kid versus canine battle for control of the Mask. But unbeknownst to them all, Loki himself has come looking for his mask and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it back.

The Scoop: A lonely young girl adopts an orphaned dog she names Winn-Dixie (after the supermarket where she found him). The bond between the girl and her special companion brings together the people in a small Florida town and heals her own troubled relationship with her father.

The Scoop: A look at one long year in the lives of an ostensibly typical, upper-middle-class suburban family. Following a sobering family tragedy, the Travises go to pieces. Teenaged son Tim, the black sheep of the family, walks through his life like it's a bad dream. His father Ben begins treating his wife and children like strangers and completely disengages from the world around him, while his mother Sandy takes to smoking pot. Meanwhile, she wages a bitter feud with the next-door neighbor over carefully concealed secrets that threaten to tear the family apart